Download or read book The World of Alphonse Allais written by Alphonse Allais and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2015-07-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In one of his Independent pieces Miles Kington once referred to a volume of Edward Lear's limericks translated into French. Not an easy task, you might think, and in translating Alphonse Allais into English, Miles Kington set himself a similar challenge. He carried it off with panache. As Max Harrison said in The Times, '... has done a difficult job well, even preserving some of Allais's puns'. Alphonse Allais has been described as the greatest humorous writer ever. In the words of Lisa Appignanesi, 'Allais was a consummate absurdist. From an ordinary phenomenon, simple sentiment or situation, he would logically deduce the looniest, most macabre and most unexpected result ... His humour kept all Paris, high and low, waiting breathlessly for the paper which would carry his next tale ...' On first publication, in 1976, Clive James in the Observer said 'Allais has been dead 70 years but his mocking tone ensures him a permanently relevant after-life'. And John Sturrock in the New Statesman, 'Allais stands, along with Jarry, at the head of the most dazzling and highly educated tradition of French humour, as witty as it is whimsical'. Faber Finds offers this rare book as a tribute not only to Alphonse Allais but also Miles Kington, two great humorists in tandem.
Download or read book The Book of Absinthe written by Phil Baker and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A witty, erudite primer to the world’s most notorious drink. La Fée Verte (or “The Green Fairy”) has intoxicated artists, poets, and writers ever since the late eighteenth century. Stories abound of absinthe’s drug-like sensations of mood lift and inspiration due to the presence of wormwood, its infamous “special” ingredient, which ultimately leads to delirium, homicidal mania, and death. Opening with the sensational 1905 Absinthe Murders, Phil Baker offers a cultural history of absinthe, from its modest origins as an herbal tonic through its luxuriantly morbid heyday in the late nineteenth century. Chronicling a fascinatingly lurid cast of historical characters who often died young, the absinthe scrapbook includes Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, Aleister Crowley, Arthur Machen, August Strindberg, Alfred Jarry, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alphonse Allais, Ernest Hemingway, and Pablo Picasso. Along with discussing the rituals and modus operandi of absinthe drinking, Baker reveals the recently discovered pharmacology of how real absinthe actually works on the nervous system, and he tests the various real and fake absinthe products that are available overseas. “Formidably researched, beautifully written, and abundant with telling detail and pitch-black humor.” —The Daily Telegraph
Download or read book Study in Black and White written by Tanya Sheehan and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-05-06 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Tanya Sheehan takes humor seriously in order to trace how photographic comedy was used in America and transnationally to express evolving ideas about race, black emancipation, and civil rights in the mid-1800s and into the twentieth century. Sheehan employs a trove of understudied materials to write a new history of photography, one that encompasses the rise of the commercial portrait studio in the 1840s, the popularization of amateur photography around 1900, and the mass circulation of postcards and other photographic ephemera in the twentieth century. She examines the racial politics that shaped some of the most essential elements of the medium, from the negative-positive process to the convention of the photographic smile. The book also places historical discourses in relation to contemporary art that critiques racism through humor, including the work of Genevieve Grieves, Adrian Piper, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, and Fred Wilson. By treating racial humor about and within the photographic medium as complex social commentary, rather than a collectible curiosity, Study in Black and White enriches our understanding of photography in popular culture. Transhistorical and interdisciplinary, this book will be of vital interest to scholars of art history and visual studies, critical race studies, U.S. history, and African American studies.
Download or read book Anthology of Black Humor written by André Breton and published by City Lights Books. This book was released on 2021-01-29 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first publication in English of the anthology that contains Breton’s definitive statement on l’humour noir, one of the seminal concepts of Surrealism, and his provocative assessments of the writers he most admired. While some of the authors featured in The Anthology of Black Humor are already well known to American readers—Swift, Kafka, Rimbaud, Poe, Lewis Carroll, and Baudelaire among them (and even then, Breton’s selections are often surprising)—many others are sure to come as a revelation. The entries range from the acerbic aphorisms of Swift, Lichtenberg, and Duchamp to the theatrical slapstick of Christian Dietrich Grabbe, from the wry missives of Rimbaud and Jacques Vache to the manic paranoia of Dali, from the ferocious iconoclasm of Alfred Jarry and Arthur Craven to the offhand hilarity of Apollinaire at his most spontaneous. For each of the forty-five authors included, Breton has provided an enlightening biographical and critical preface, situating both the writer and the work in the context of black humor—a partly macabre, partly ironic, and often absurd turn of spirit that Breton defined as "a superior revolt of the mind." "Anthologies can aim to be groundbreaking or thought-provoking; few can be said to have introduced a new phrase—or a new concept—into the language. No one had ever used the term "black humour" before this one came along, unless, perhaps, it was from a racial angle."—The Guardian Andre Breton (1896-1966), the founder and principal theorist of the Surrealist movement, is one of the major literary figures of the past century. His best-known works in English translation include Nadja, Mad Love, The Manifestoes of Surrealism, The Magnetic Fields (with Philippe Soupault), and Earthlight. Mark Polizzotti is the author of Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre Breton.
Download or read book Humorous Texts written by Salvatore Attardo and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a theory of long humorous texts based on a revision and an upgrade of the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH), a decade after its first proposal. The theory is informed by current research in psycholinguistics and cognitive science. It is predicated on the fact that there are humorous mechanisms in long texts that have no counterpart in jokes. The book includes a number of case studies, among them Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Allais' story Han Rybeck. A ground-breaking discussion of the quantitative distribution of humor in select texts is presented.
Download or read book Dictionary of Gestures written by Francois Caradec and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated guide to more than 850 gestures and their meanings around the world, from a nod of the head to a click of the heels. Gestures convey meaning with a flourish. A vigorous nod of the head, a bold jut of the chin, an enthusiastic thumbs-up: all speak louder than words. Yet the same gesture may have different meanings in different parts of the world. What Americans understand as the “A-OK gesture,” for example, is an obscene insult in the Arab world. This volume is the reference book we didn't know we needed—an illustrated dictionary of 850 gestures and their meanings around the world. It catalogs voluntary gestures made to communicate openly—as distinct from sign language, dance moves, involuntary “tells,” or secret handshakes—and explains what the gesture conveys in a variety of locations. It is organized by body part, from top to bottom, from head (nodding, shaking, turning) to foot (scraping, kicking, playing footsie). We learn that “to oscillate the head while gently throwing it back” communicates approval in some countries even though it resembles the headshake of disapproval used in other countries; that “to tap a slightly inflated cheek” constitutes an erotic invitation when accompanied by a wink; that the middle finger pointed in the air signifies approval in South America. We may already know that it is a grave insult in the Middle East and Asia to display the sole of one's shoe, but perhaps not that motorcyclists sometimes greet each other by raising a foot. Illustrated with clever line drawings and documented with quotations from literature (the author, François Caradec, was a distinguished and prolific historian of literature, culture, and humorous oddities, as well as a novelist and poet), this dictionary offers readers unique lessons in polylingual meaning.
Download or read book Let s parler Franglais written by Miles Kington and published by Canelo. This book was released on 2015-12-07 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘A true comic genius’ Ian Hislop ‘Ridiculously funny’ Joanna Lumley Bonjour toutes les personnes! Welcome to the wonderful world of Franglais. The trouble with French is that there are far too few English words in it. Miles Kington – the critic, columnist, and creator of Franglais – puts that right. His magnificent new language can be understood by almost anyone who failed GCSE French. If you passed GCSE French it could be tricky, but do try anyway. So achetez! Lisez! Et enjoy! Merci beaucoup. ‘What a truly gifted, consistently funny writer’ Maureen Lipman ‘Utterly charming and extremely funny’ Independent Miles Kington was one of Britain’s most renowned and best loved journalists. Born in County Down, he grew up in Wales and was educated in Scotland, which was all a big mistake as he was actually English. A presenter, playwright, polymath and wit, he wrote columns for The Times, the Independent, Punch and The Oldie. His other acclaimed titles include Someone Like Me, How Shall I Tell the Dog? and The Franglais Lieutenant’s Woman.
Download or read book The Original Accident written by Paul Virilio and published by Polity. This book was released on 2007-02-27 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virilio defines the ways in which postindustrial science has merged with out-and-out hyperterrorism to threaten the foundations of Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian civilisation, and the future of the planet with them, through innovation of mass catastrophes that are part and parcel of its panoply of inventions.
Download or read book Montmartre A Cultural History written by Nicholas Hewitt and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-30 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Montmartre: A Cultural History offers an engaging tour of one of the most fascinating areas of Paris, exploring a rich history from the Belle Epoque to the Occupation. The work explores many iconic areas of Paris, such as the Moulin-Rouge and Sacré-Coeur.
Download or read book A Forest of Symbols written by Andrei Pop and published by Zone Books. This book was released on 2019-10-18 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking book, Andrei Pop presents a lucid reassessment of those writers and artists in the late nineteenth century whose work merits the adjective “symbolist.” For Pop, this term denotes an art that is self-conscious about its modes of making meaning and he argues that these symbolist practices, which sought to provide more direct access to the viewer by constant revision of its material means of meaning-making (brushstrokes on a canvas, words on a page), are crucial to understanding the genesis of modern art. The symbolists saw art not as a social revolution, but a revolution in sense and in how we conceptualize the world. At the same time, the concerns of symbolist painters and poets were shared to a remarkable degree by theoretical scientists of the period, especially by mathematicians and logicians who were dissatisfied with the strict empiricism dominant in their disciplines, and which made shared knowledge seem unattainable. A crisis of sense made art and science look for conceptual foundations underlying the diverging subjective responses and perceptions of individuals. Unlike other studies of this period, Pop’s focus is not on how individual artists may have absorbed bits of scientific theories, but rather on the philosophical questions that were relevant to both domains. The problem of subjectivity in particular, of what in one’s experience can and cannot be shared, was crucial to the possibility of collaboration within science and to the communication of artistic innovation. Pop’s brilliant close readings of the literary and visual practices of Manet and Mallarmé, of drawings by Ernst Mach, William James and Wittgenstein, of experiments with color by Bracquemond and Van Gogh, and of the philosophical systems of Frege and Russell add up to a startling but coherent picture of the symbolist heritage of modernity and its consequences.
Download or read book My Mother The Bearded Lady written by Miles Kington and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journalist, columnist, humorist and musician, Miles Kington began his writing career at Punch, where he created Franglais, a hugely popular fictional language, before going on to write a daily column for The Times, followed by the Independent. He wrote over thirty thousand newspaper columns in his lifetime, as well as contributing to countless magazines and other publications. When he died in 2008, he left behind an enormous archive of correspondence. Effortlessly funny and entertaining, this collection is full of Kington’s inimitable style. He had kept copies of every letter he had sent or received for the best part of fifty years, letters to and from the great and the good of the arts – Terry Jones, Melvyn Bragg, Joanna Lumley, John Cleese, Andre Previn, Philip Larkin, Alan Coren, Kenneth Williams, and many more. My Mother, The Bearded Lady is a selection of these captivating letters, chosen and edited by his wife, Caroline Kington.
Download or read book Art and the Everyday written by Nancy Perloff and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1991 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The premiere of Erik Satie's Parade in May 1917 marked the emergence of a new musical avant-garde in Paris. To many young artists Parade exemplified a wish to escape Symbolist purity and fuse 'art' with everyday life--a rallying cry quickly adopted by Jean Cocteau in his celebrated pamphlet on new French music, The Cock And The Harlequin, in 1918.
Download or read book Captain Cap written by Alphonse Allais and published by Black Scat Books. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mammoth madcap trade paperback edition -- the complete and unabridged translation of the original 1902 French classic by Alphonse Allais. 370 pages, including eight uncollected "Captain Cap" stories, plus a "Cappendix" of rare historical pictures. The book is illustrated throughout with witty drawings by Doug Skinner, in addition to his extensive notes on the translation and lively introduction. Don't settle for imitations, this is 100% pure absurdist humor!
Download or read book Bohemian Paris written by Dan Franck and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how the atmosphere and people of Paris lead to the development of modern art at the beginning of the twentieth century and profiles influential artists and writers of the era.
Download or read book Emile Cohl Caricature and Film written by Donald Crafton and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the definitive biography of Emile Cohl (1857-1938), one of the most important pioneers of the art of the animated cartoon and an innovative contributor to popular graphic humor at a critical moment when it changed from traditional caricature to the modern comic strip. This profusely illustrated book provides not only a wealth of information on Cohl's life but also an analysis of his contribution to the development of the animation film in both France and the United States and an interpretation of how the new genre fit into the historical shift from a "primitive" to a "classical" cinema. "Beautiful in look and design, with stunning reproductions from films and newspapers, Emile Cohl, Caricature, and Film offers a biography of a figure who virtually created the European art of animation... In its theory and history, the book is one of the most important contributions to [the field of animated film]. But [it] is central for film study per se, offering a fresh, exciting look at the complicated world of early cinema."--Dana Polan, Film Quarterly Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book The Cabaret written by Lisa Appignanesi and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author presents a comprehensive cultural history of cabaret, where the most radical of artists, poets, writers, musicians and theatre directors have gathered since 1881. This edition is enriched with materials that have become more accessible in the post-Soviet era.
Download or read book Dancing with Mermaids written by Miles Gibson and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1985, Miles Gibson's phantasmagoric second novel returns to print with a new preface by the author. Wreathed in legends and haunted by ghosts, the little Dorset village of Rams Horn is a fantastical seaside world where reality ebbs and flows like the tide. A clairvoyant, waiting for her drowned husband to return from the grave, is taunted by demons, a mysterious African sailor arrives from the sea in search of lodgings, small boys spy on their mothers, and the new doctor, sitting in his empty surgery, turns to ancient remedies in a bid to cure his own love sickness. 'An imaginative tour de force and a considerable stylistic achievement... Gibson has few equals among his contemporaries.' Time Out 'An extraordinary talent dances with perfect control across hypnotic pages.' Financial Times
